Theoretical/Abstract

This debate about whether judicial review is compatible with democracy is meant to get students thinking about what sort of ideal democracy is, and to see both its procedural and substantive components. Read more about Judicial Review and Democracy

Objectives: In this assignment designed by J.M. Grenier, Students will be able to explain what is meant by a "virtual world" and the 3D web, as well as discuss the potential for the use of these tools and their impact to existing methods of communication on the web.

Created by Kostia Bergman, Erin Cram, Wendy Smith, Scott Dobrin, Presque Isle, and Judith Roe, this lesson for an intermediate Cell Biology course encourages students to take a big-picture view of the cell by comparing cells to buildings in order to think about the dynamic processes within cells. The lesson utilizes a jigsaw and quick write. Read more about Cells vs. Buildings

Created by Ned Dochtermann, Erin Gillam, Timothy Greives, Kristina Holder, Steve Travers, and Jennifer Weghorst, this lesson focuses on the evolutionary mechanism of random genetic drift. Students explore how population size affects allele frequencies by engaging in a group activity that involves generating and plotting data, interpreting graphs, and formulating hypotheses. Read more about Understanding the mechanisms of evolution: random genetic drift

Created by Jillian Banks, Jeremy Brown, Cindy Gordon, Chris Gregg, Travis Marsico, Chris Osovitz, and Rebecca Symula, this activity focuses on the importance of temporal scale and specifically seeks to resolve the common student misconception that evolutionary change is only observable on a single timescale. It utilizes index cards in an interactive jigsaw. Read more about The Problem of Scale in Evolution

In Nathan Kaplan's general education course EMR 14, "Fat Chance," students play games to connect the probability concepts learned in lecture to some fun activities that the students are familiar with. On some broader level, the goal is to see that probability is at work in lots of situations outside of the somewhat artificial classroom setting. Read more about Probability Games

In CB51: Making the Middle Ages, the teaching staff, consisting of Professor Dan Smail and TFs Rowan Dorin, Zoe Silverman, Joey McMullen, and Rena Lauer, used an online annotation tool to have students tag images and descriptions of hell and create a "tag cloud." This activity engaged students in perceptions and interpretations of hell and the use of metadata. Read more about Tagging the Infernal

In SPU 14, Professor Charles Langmuir has a unique office hours policy where he holds office hours for three hours a week and goves students one extra credit point for every time they come and ask a question. Read more about Extra Credit Office Hours

In this activity, Nicole Deterding used a case study in her Sociology of Education section to integrate and apply theories of different types of capital (human, social, and cultural) and to clarify student understanding. Read more about Capital Case Study